Do you hear, Æschines, the law distinctly saying - "unless where any are voted by the people or the council; such may be proclaimed"? Why then, wretched man, do you play the pettifogger? Why manufacture arguments? Why don't you take hellebore for your malady? Are you not ashamed to bring on a cause for spite, and not for any offense? to alter some laws, and to garble others, the whole of which should in justice be read to persons sworn to decide according to the laws? And you that act thus describe the qualities which belong to a friend of the people, as if you had ordered a statue according to contract, and received it without having what the contract required; or as if friends of the people were known by words, and not by acts and measures! And you bawl out, regardless of decency, a sort of cart-language, applicable to yourself and your race, not to me.1

10. Refutation. After assigning the brief on Capital Punishment (cf. Appendix) for study, ask the class to state, orally or on paper, (1) whether the introduction is complete, and if not what should be added; (2) whether in rebuttal all the ideas given as main headings must be answered, and if not, why not; (3) whether all the sub-ideas within a division must be treated, and if not, why not; (4) whether any different ordering of the ideas in rebuttal will help, and why; (5) what reply the class will attempt to make to the case as rearranged and condensed.

11. Refutation. It is helpful to divide the class into groups of two, giving one student the affirmative, the other the negative of some proposition. When the forensics come in, let each man criticise his opponent's manuscript on the following matters: (1) Is your opponent's approach to the case the one you expected? (2) Has he advanced essential ideas for which you are unprepared? (3) Is the order of his ideas what you anticipated, better, or one which you wish to shift in refuting his case? (4) Can you justify changing his order? (5) Do you need to take up all his ideas? (6) If not, what can you subordinate or cut out, and why? (7) What effect on your case has his attack? (8) Have you provided him in your manuscript with ideas not treated by him, and if so, how much are these likely to affect his rewriting of his work? (9) What answers must you now make to his case as rearranged and condensed? These criticisms should be read in connection with the argument commented on. They may be returned to the writers with their own arguments, and students should be required in rewriting their first drafts of the arguments to show profit from their criticism of their opponent's work and from the instructor's comments on that criticism.

.

CHAPTER IV

BRIEF-DRAWING

SECTION 1 - WHAT THE BRIEF IS

The purpose of the brief. In the process of investiga tion the student has become generally familiar with his subject through his preliminary reading, and in his special issues has obtained a definite statement of the nature and extent of what he wishes to prove. Through his knowledge of what constitutes evidence, from what sources it may be derived, what forms it assumes, and by what tests it should be judged, he is prepared to collect intelligently the necessary material for his argument. Before, however, he can present that material in the fashion best adapted for convincing, he should master the principles of brief-drawing. Such mastery will give him a definite and convenient form in which he may present his case in its full logical force for the examination and criticism of a second person before he undertakes the presentation of his argument in literary form. But his brief will do more than this. It will aid him in coördinating and subordinating accurately, for it will necessitate careful discrimination between material that is primary and material that is subsidiary; it will aid him in arranging effectively the ideas so distinguished; and it will offer him a convenient device for sorting and grouping his evidence, that is, the facts and reasons which he is to make use of in convincing his readers. To accomplish these ends the brief must be a summary that combines clearness and conciseness of exposition, and is especially adapted for the ordination, arrangement, and grouping of evidence. In this chapter will be explained one system of brief-drawing that has proved useful in securing these ends.

The origin of the brief. A student can hardly have analyzed his question without having formed in his own mind a rough plan of his argument. He must at least know the main arguments by which the question has been discussed in the past, and he must have determined in his special issues the lines upon which his own argument is to be conducted. The letter from Lincoln to McClellan shows admirably such special issues in a complicated case. An outline of the investigation and preliminary analysis which must have preceded, and of McClellan's answer, if he tried to convince Lincoln of the superiority of his plan, - would give a complete brief of which these keen special issues would be the corner stone. Given these clear and definite issues, a student of the campaigns of the Civil War could construct an elaborate argument.

Illustration 1

President Lincoln to General McClellan

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
February 3, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL MCCLELLAN:

My dear Sir: You and I have distinct and different plans for a movement of the Army of the Potomac - yours to be down the Chesapeake, up the Rappahannock to Urbana, and across land to the terminus of the railroad on the York River; mine to move directly to a point on the railroad southwest of Manassas.

If you will give me satisfactory answers to the following questions, I shall gladly yield my plan to yours.

First. Does not your plan involve a greatly larger expendi. ture of time and money than mine?

Second. Wherein is a victory more certain by your plan than mine?

Third. Wherein is a victory more valuable by your plan than mine?

Fourth. In fact, would it not be less valuable in this, that. it would break no great line of the enemy's communications, while mine would?

Fifth. In case of disaster, would not a retreat be more difficult by your plan than mine?

Yours truly,

MAJOR-GENERAL MCCLELLAN.1

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Instead of such an outline, however, which although fragmentary is good as far as it goes, the beginner in brief-drawing too often tries to give some clew to the nature of the evidence to follow, in some such way as do the writers of the two following sets of speaker's notes. However serviceable these may have been for the purpose for which they were intended, as briefs they are of little value, for they are not written with the needs of the reader continually in view, as a brief should be.

Illustration 2

A brief by Abraham Lincoln in a case to recover for the widow of a Revolutionary veteran the sum of $200 which a rascally agent had retained out of $400 of pension money.1

"No contract. Not professional services. Unreasonable charge. - Money retained by Def't not given to Pl'ff. Revolutionary War. - Describe Valley Forge privations. Pl'ff's husband. Soldier leaving home for army. - Skin Def't. Close."

Illustration 3 - A student's notes for debate

That Political Union with Cuba would be Desirable for the

United States

INTRODUCTION

A. Origin of the Question in Spanish War.

B. Definition of Political Union.

C. Tests of Desirability.

D. Clash in Opinion. Aff. Neg.

E. Matter to be ruled out.

F. Special Issues.

BRIEF PROPER

A. Undesirable on Military grounds.
B. Undesirable on Political grounds.
C. Undesirable on Social grounds.
D. Independence of Cuba.

CONCLUSION

Even the following skeleton brief has little usefulness except for the writer or some one fully informed as to the arguments in the case and the evidence at the writer's disposal.